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Introduction

The methodology used in any study is necessarily dependent on the purpose of the study. Patton (1990) states: "Purpose is the controlling force in research. Decisions about design, measurement, analysis, and reporting all flow from purpose. Therefore, the first step in a research process is getting clear about purpose" (p. 150).
In discussing the marriage of purpose and process (methodology), Wolcott (1992) comments that
research purpose is the only basis on which decisions about process can be made; the clearer the purpose, the clearer the ways to achieve it. . . . Stripped of eloquence that can be added later, this key feature of qualitative (and any other) research begins with the phrase, "The purpose of this study is . . . " The fewer the words needed, the better; wordiness is a dead giveaway to an ill-formed, or at least not-yet-formed idea. (p. 7)
Therefore, the type of research used in a study is primarily dependent on the purpose of the study or what the researcher hopes to achieve. Patton discusses five basic types of research. These are+
1. basic research to contribute to fundamental knowledge and theory
2. applied research to illumine a societal concern
3. summative evaluation to determine program effectiveness
4. formative evaluation to improve a program
5. action research to solve a problem. (Patton, 1990, p. 150)

The purpose of this study is to provide feedback to those responsible for the coordination of the Seventh-day Adventist North American Division Tutoring and Mentoring effort that is a response to President Clinton's America Reads initiative. Through this formative evaluation, specific recommendations are given which, I hope, will help in the ongoing development of this and similar programs. More generally, the compilation of references from the existing literature about subjects related to the effort will be valuable to those interested in providing literacy tutoring help to young readers.
Because formative studies aim to improve a specific program, the findings or recommendations may or may not be applicable to other situations. "The purpose is to improve human intervention within a specific set of activities at a specific time for a specific group of people" (Patton, 1990, p. 156). Qualitative methods are particularly suited for this kind of study since the focus is limited. Subject numbers are usually small, with case studies being a preferred mode of investigation.

Features of Qualitative Research Generally and in This Study

Eisner's Characteristics of Qualitative Studies

In defining the features of qualitative modes of inquiry, I use a six-point description offered by Eisner (1991). As I offer his descriptions, I apply them to this study specifically and explain why they are appropriate given the purpose offered above.

Field Focused

First, qualitative studies are field focused. By this term, Eisner implies that the researcher goes to the people and places where the events of interest to the researcher are happening. This also implies that qualitative studies are nonmanipulative, that is, objects and situations are studied intact instead of in an artificial, experimental environment.
In this study, I was in the field in two different capacities. The initial Tutoring and Mentoring training event was held in late August 1997 at the North American Division Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. I attended this conference in a dual-role capacity as both a co-presenter and as a participant observer with a research goal in mind.
Participant observation is an important tool for the qualitative researcher. The challenge for the participant observer is "to seek the essence of the life of the observed, to sum up, to find a central unifying principle" (Bruyn, 1966, p. 316). My participation, as mentioned before, was in a role different from those being trained since I was also acting as a trainer. But I was still able to fulfill the purpose of participant observation, which is "to describe the setting that was observed, the activities that took place in that setting, the people who participated in those activities, and the meanings of what was observed from the perspective of those observed" (Patton, 1990, p. 202). These observations were documented with field notes, which were added to after I reviewed the entire training event by videotape (provided to me by one of the trainees). My time with the trainees was brief, as was their training experience. Therefore, the "depth" of the encounter was limited because of time factors, but it did parallel the experience of the participants. This is the essence of participant observation.
Another field-based qualitative method used to gather data is by performing case studies of participants who are of particular interest to the researcher. My choices of follow-up subjects were based on a number of factors including their level of implementation of the program, scheduling concerns, and their particular backgrounds. Merriam (1988) identifies four essential characteristics of case study research which may help to define it in this context:
Particularistic. Case studies focus on a particular phenomenon, situation, event, or program.

Descriptive. The end product of a case study is a rich "thick" description of the phenomenon under study.

Heuristic. Case studies illuminate the reader's understanding of the phenomenon under study.

Inductive. Case studies rely on inductive reasoning in that the generalizations made as a result of studying the phenomenon emerge from the examination of the data collected in context. (pp. 11-12)

Like Merriam, I view these characteristics not as "types" of case study research, but as threads that weave in and out of each case that I investigated. I discuss why I chose to study the particular individuals that I did later in this chapter.
Interviews with the case study participants were tape recorded. I used an interview schedule not as a script, but as a general guide (Appendix A). Knapp (1997) makes a case for this type of open-ended interviewing, stating that having a "shared agenda" is not only the most ethical way to interview people, but also the most effective since it allows for serendipitous responses to questions not thought of by the interviewer. The interview guide I used was based on the framework of critical components described in chapter 2. I took some field notes during my on-site visits, but interviews provided the bulk of information gleaned from case study participants.

The Self as Instrument
A second characteristic of qualitative inquiry as defined by Eisner (1991) relates to the self as instrument. Eisner states that the important features in any study do not simply announce themselves. "Researchers must see what is to be seen, given some frame of reference and some set of intentions. The self is the instrument that engages the situation and makes sense of it" (pp. 33-34). He cautions that this "appreciation for personal insight as a source of meaning does not provide a license for freedom" (p. 35). Evidence and reasons for interpreting things the way they do must be provided by researchers. Peshkin (1988) comments that subjectivity is inevitable in any study, whether qualitative or quantitative, and that researchers should consciously seek it out during their entire study. Ideally they should let readers know of their own biases while they seek to control it. This will help to keep their work from becoming "autobiographical."
Whenever possible in this study, I let the participants speak for themselves. Yet my interpretation of their comments was based in the framework of critical components of effective tutoring programs that I assembled from the literature. Borman, LeCompte, and Goetz (1986) suggest that this combination of description with established frameworks derived from the literature can prevent qualitative studies from producing conclusions that some might call "trivial." They state:
In our opinion, simple, flat description that does not create linkages with substantial conceptual and theoretical literature is not good ethnography; neither is research that does not examine sociohistorical context for explanations of what is going on. The recursive nature of analysis in qualitative and ethnographic research is designed to help the investigator build constructs and integrate them with existing results from the research literature, to create linkages among the classes of phenomena observed in the research site, to build constructs and integrate them with the existing research literature, and to generate explanations for what has been found. (p. 49)

I had the liberty to act as an editor of the comments made by participants, choosing what to include or not include. How can the reader be assured that my renderings of their worlds are accurate? I accomplished this in two important ways. The first is that I solicited feedback from the primary case study informants. Miles and Huberman (1984a) contend that "a good explanation deserves attention from the people whose behavior it is about. Getting feedback from the informants . . . has particular confirmatory power" (p. 28). After completing my analysis of their tutoring programs, I sent an explanation of my critical components matrix to my primary case study informants along with the material I had written based on my interviews and visits with them. Their feedback was critical in shaping the final draft of my report.
Another way that my conclusions were verified was through the use of multiple data sources. This data triangulation (Denzin, 1978) helps to strengthen the analysis presented at the end of the study. My data were collected through interviews, observation, surveys, and journals from a number of participants over a 9-month period. The findings that I present in this study were not considered unless they could be confirmed by at least two different sources.
I used two open-ended surveys during the study. The first was simply a large, blank index card where the subjects were asked to give written responses to several different questions. The data from these cards are analyzed and reported in chapter 4. The second instrument was somewhat more formal. Obviously, the participants had/have backgrounds that vary markedly from each other. Many have had little or no experience as instructors in any kind of teaching-learning situation, so they came to this situation with various levels of concern about what they have volunteered to do. Fuller (1969) hypothesized that the concerns teachers have progress through several stages as they are learning new innovations. Initially, their concerns are with "self" issues: "How will this affect me?" The next level is concerned with the "task," or "What is this innovation all about?" The final level of concern has to do with "impact," or "How is this affecting my pupils?" A team from the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education (Hall, George, & Rutherford, 1977) expanded upon Fuller's work by breaking down the concerns into seven different stages: awareness, informational, personal, management, consequence, collaboration, and refocusing. They developed the Stages of Concern (SoC) Questionnaire to measure the continuum of attitudes toward an innovation that evolve in a fairly natural sequence. With this tool, I analyzed the concerns of these volunteers as they were completing their initial training session (Appendix A). This instrument is described more fully in chapter 4.
As a final source of data I kept a journal of my telephone and E-mail conversations that I had with the participants. Because of the difficulty in recording phone conversations, I took notes during my talks and I wrote as much as I could recall immediately as we were finished. I also wrote my own thoughts about my continuing work in this journal. This helped me to formulate my ideas as the study progressed.

Interpretive Character
The interpretive character of qualitative research is the third feature mentioned by Eisner (1991). The term interpretive has two meanings in the context of qualitative inquiry. The first pertains to questions of why. Why do people respond the ways they do in given situations? Why does an approach work in one location and not in another? To answer these questions the researcher either has to use constructs from the social sciences or he/she must create new theory for consideration.
Interpretation also has to do with matters of meaning. This is related to the why questions discussed above, but it goes deeper into areas of motive and experience. Rather than simply giving an account of the more obvious reasons for peoples' actions, interpretation in this context "penetrates the surface. Qualitative inquirers . . . aim beneath manifest behavior to the meaning events have for those who experience them" (Eisner, 1991, p. 35).
Perhaps Eisner's two questions above are a slightly more poetic way of describing what other qualitative theorists might call hypothesis development (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) or conclusion drawing (Miles & Huberman, 1984a). Experimental studies begin with a hypothesis which is either verified or not, while nonexperimental studies may generate hypotheses from data that have been systematically gathered.
Most often in this study, I let the participants speak for themselves while offering just enough interpretation to set their comments within a context. But, especially when discussing my findings in the final chapters, I delve into the shared experiences and the meanings behind the actions (or absence of action) of the participants. I explain the reasons, based on their own accounts and my own observations, for their eventual ability or inability to begin tutoring projects, citing evidence from my records.

The Use of Expressive Language
The use of expressive language is the fourth characteristic of qualitative research discussed by Eisner (1991). The detached, mechanistic voice found in many journals is not usually a feature of qualitative studies. Eisner calls the use of first-person singular and the utilization of metaphor and descriptive, even poetic, language the "signature" of the qualitative researcher. He asks, "Why take the heart out of the situations we are trying to help readers understand?" (p. 37)
Miles and Huberman (1984a) suggest that making metaphors has the capability of pulling great quantities of fragmented data together into a one single descriptive image. Yet they confess that their general style of reporting does lean toward the "realist/positivist side" describing themselves as "right-wing qualitative researchers" (p. 23). This illustrates that there are wide variations even among qualitative theorists as to the personal poetic flair they give their work. Tesch (1990) presents a continuum of qualitative research interests with science-like methods on one end of the spectrum and art-like methods on the other.
I appreciate and take the liberty to use descriptive language and first-person singular voice. I agree with Eisner when he asserts that the detached voice used in many reports can be a deceptive way to imply detachment and objectivity. Yet my style does tend to be less metaphoric than others. I try to tell it like it is, and I use poetic language when it seems useful.

Attention to Particulars
A fifth feature of qualitative studies, according to Eisner (1991), is their attention to particulars. The "flavor" of the particular situation is valued at least as much as aggregated data from multiple subjects. This flavor is maintained "by sensitivity to what might be called the aesthetic features of the case" and an "awareness of its distinctiveness" (p. 38).
Case study research, which I use in this study, allows for discovery of these distinctive and aesthetic features. Through interviewing and observation the unique characteristics of each case can be discovered and mined, uncovering a wealth of information valuable to the researcher and reader. Merriam (1988) agrees:
Investigators use a case study design in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the situation and its meaning for those involved. The interest is in process rather than outcomes, in context rather than a specific variable, in discovery rather than a confirmation. (p. xii)

The cases I investigate are drawn from a larger group of people who were the first trainees in a particular tutoring and mentoring program. More people have and will become involved in the effort, but I decided to limit my focus to this initial cohort, choosing to tell their stories in an in-depth fashion rather than extending to the larger group.

Coherence, Insight, and Instrumental Utility
Eisner's sixth and final characteristic of qualitative studies "pertains to the criteria for judging their success. Qualitative research becomes believable because of its "coherence, insight, and instrumental utility" (1991, p. 39). By these terms, Eisner means that qualitative studies use persuasion rather than statistical "proofs" of cause and effect or association. He points to the field of law as a model for such work. Lawyers utilize the theaters of courtrooms to convince juries of the plausibility of their case. So it is with qualitative work. It is the "weight" of the evidence, the coherence of the facts presented, and the cogency of the interpretation that convinces the reader of the explanations given.
The purpose of this study is primarily descriptive as opposed to experimental. "The aim of descriptive research is to examine events or phenomena" (Merriam, 1988, p. 7). This report is intended to enlighten those who are intricately involved in the program under study. It is my goal to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the approach undertaken by the organizers of the Adventist Tutoring and Mentoring initiative. My need to convince, to be plausible in my explanations, and to provide insight is for the purpose of providing some amount of guidance to the decision-makers in this effort.
Perhaps a comment should be made regarding what Eisner called instrumental utility. I see this as a measure of the study's usefulness to not only the target group, but also to those outside of the study's immediate context. Eisner (1991), in defining instrumental utility as a study's usefulness, says that it can be useful in two primary ways. It can help us to comprehend a situation that would otherwise be confusing–the usefulness of comprehension. A study can also help in anticipating the future–the usefulness of anticipation. This anticipation can be provided by studies that figuratively act as predictors, maps, or guides.

Design of the Study
Data Collection

Phases of Data Collection
The data for this study were collected in four general phases. I began collecting data during the first training session held in Silver Spring, Maryland, during the final week of August 1997. The SMILIES portion of the training took place during the last 2 days of the session. During this time Dr. Shirley Freed led the training and I assisted her. We solicited several written responses from the participants that were open-ended answers to questions having to do with specific parts of the training. I administered the open-ended Stages of Concern (SoC) survey (Hall et al., 1977) during the final hour of the training (Appendix A). I also took observation field notes during the training event, and I spent some time informally getting to know the participants. Chapter 4 is an analysis of this SMILIES training session.
In the second phase of data collection from September to December 1997, I took notes as I talked with many of the participants by telephone to assess their progress in establishing tutoring sites in their respective locations. It became obvious during this time that most were experiencing some degree of frustration or hesitancy, even though they still maintained a general enthusiasm for the initiative. It was also during this time that I learned of the successful establishment of projects in Boston and the Los Angeles area by two of the participants. I became interested in their stories and determined to make on-site visits to them in the future.
The third phase of data collection from January through March 1998 involved my visits, observations, and interviews with these two participants–Arnold in Los Angeles and Nydia in Boston–and with some of their trainees. These visits took place in February and March, 1998. In each location I tape-recorded my interviews and collected documents related to their efforts. Also, at the end of January, project coordinator Sandra Brown held a teleconference with several of the trainees from the August 1997 training session. I took part in this conference and took notes as it progressed.
In the final phase of data collection I contacted as many of the initial trainees by telephone as possible for a final interview, during which I took notes. We discussed what progress, if any, had been made in their implementation efforts, and I gave them an opportunity to express whatever frustrations or hopes that they had related to the initiative.
The schedule of data collection (see Table 3) will help the reader to develop a sense of the timing and nature of the contact between the participants and me. I did attempt to contact each of the participants at least four or five times, and I had difficulty connecting with a few. There were three "couples" at the training–two husband and wife teams and one mother and daughter team. In each couple, the wife or mother acted as the spokesperson for the pair. All names of participants on the schedule and in this report, with the exceptions of my two case study subjects, are pseudonyms.
TABLE 3

SCHEDULE OF DATA COLLECTION
TABLE 3

Name	Phase 1 August 1997	Phase 2 Sept. - Dec. 1997	Phase 3 Jan. - March	Phase 4 April - May 1998
Monica	O Q Q	T		T
Irene	O Q Q	T
Margie	O Q
Susan	O Q Q Telephone	T T		T
Thomas	O Q
Connie	O Q Q Telephone	T	C	T
Paula	O Q Q Telephone
Dawn	O Q Q Telephone	T		T
Berta	O Q Q Telephone
Lee	O Q Q Telephone			T
Carla	O Q Q Telephone	T		T
Amy	O Q Q Telephone			T
Terry	O Q Q Telephone		C	T
Sherry	O Q Q Telephone	T	C	T
Howard	O Q
Nydia	O Q	E T E E E	E E E V	E E T
Tasha	O Q Q Telephone		C	T
Ruth	O Q Q Telephone	T	C	T
Rose	O Q Q Telephone	T		T
Patty	O Q
Edward	O Q Q Telephone	T		T
Arnold	O Q Q Telephone	T T T	C E V	E E
Ella	O Q Q Telephone	T		T
June	O Q Q Telephone
Lindsey	O Q Q	T		T

Note.

C = Teleconference; E = E-mail; O = Observation; Q = Questionnaire; V = Site Visit;

T = Telephone Conversation.

Selection of Cases
As mentioned above, two participants, Arnold Trujillo and Nydia, Mendez (they requested that I use their actual names), were immediately successful in initiating tutoring projects. Their cases represent very different scenarios–Arnold is a full-time church leader working with volunteers of college age or younger. The tutoring projects under his supervision are operating from churches. Tutoring takes place outside of the school day. Nydia, on the other hand, is a principal at a public elementary school in Boston. Her volunteers are mothers who tutor at the school during the regular school day in full cooperation with the children's teachers. I decided that these two cases warranted special attention because of the immediate success of the overseers and because of their unique settings and operating parameters. No other projects initiated by the August trainees were in operation during the 1997-1998 school year.
Chapter 7 contains a discussion of the other participants and their situations synthesized from data I collected in all four phases. Certainly, each trainee has a unique story to tell as to why he or she experienced frustration or paralysis in trying to establish a program. Rather than simply categorizing their frustrations, I have chosen to use the more "art-like" (Tesch, 1990) form of depiction known as the collective story (Richardson, 1990). "The collective story displays an individual's story by narrativizing the experiences of the social category to which the individual belongs, rather than by telling the particular individual's story " (p. 25). The social category, in this case, is composed of the trainees who, for various reasons, were unable or unwilling to establish a tutoring site in their home locations. Thus, this chapter tells composite stories that are based on telephone interviews I had with these people.
Denzin (1994) boldly asserts that "in the social sciences, there is only interpretation. Nothing speaks for itself" (p. 500). He classifies research writing as either "productive" or "expressive" (pp. 504-505). My writing previous to chapter 7 is more "productive" in that I seek to present the objective realities experienced by the participants. Using the classic qualitative tools of observation and interview, my findings are categorized and classified, usually according to preexisting schemes. But in chapter 7, I choose to use the "expressive"narrative research tool of telling collective stories because, in Denison's (1996) words,
stories show instead of tell; they are less author-centered; they allow the reader to interpret and make meaning, thus recognizing that the text has no universal or general claim to authority; and, they effectively communicate what has been learned. (p. 352)

Rinehart (1998) uses different terms to describe types of qualitative/ethnographic writing. He defines "academic ethnography" as the now traditional sort of qualitative work that attempts to "capture the experience so that readers may more nearly approach the primary experience" (p. 203). This parallels my "productive" writing explained above. Collective stories fit under Rinehart's "fictional ethnography" where "the fundamental thrust . . . is to get at both the affective feel of the experience and the cognitive truth of it" (p. 204).
My goal, in doing this case study research, it to communicate the lived experiences of the participants to the reader as effectively as possible. It is hoped that the successes and frustrations of the first trainees may prove to be instructive and enlightening to the project organizers and to all those interested in the successful implementation of tutoring programs.

The Data File
I built a data file containing all pertinent information gathered during all four phases of data collection. This file includes observation field notes, completed questionnaires, interview transcriptions, notes taken during telephone conversations, E-mail correspondences, and journal reflections. It also includes some printed material supplied to me by the case study informants and by the project coordinator–vision statements, resumes, flyers, and other correspondence. After I compiled all the data into the file, I organized it into four parts:
1. Questionnaires and other material from the August, 1997 Tutoring and Mentoring training session, including information supplied to me by the project coordinators.
2. Transcriptions, notes, and other material relating to Arnold's case study.
3. Transcriptions, notes, and other material relating to Nydia's case study.
4. Telephone conversation notes taken while talking with the other participants, including matrices and other classification tools that I developed to aid me in my analysis of the data.
Organizing the data in this way not only makes sense categorically, it also results in a somewhat chronologically sequenced file. When referencing data file information, I make the citation (Data File, p. #) in parentheses.

Data Analysis
The case study data were interpreted using a conceptual framework (Miles & Huberman, 1984a) suggested by the literature (Borman et al., 1986) pertaining to successful literacy tutoring programs. As I read and reread the transcriptions from interviews, I coded the data according to the framework I developed, which is explained in chapter 2. Glaser and Strauss (1967) warned that using borrowed classification schemes may hinder the generation of new categories. Keeping this in mind, I also allowed new categories to emerge as I read. As I carried the framework into the next case, I again coded the data, continuing to watch for the emergence of potential new categories. This "speculation," according to Merriam (1988), is "the key to developing theory in a qualitative study" (p. 141). Merriam cites Goetz and LeCompte (1984), who say that speculation involves
playing with ideas probabilistically. It permits the investigator to go beyond the data and make guesses about what will happen in the future, based on what has been learned in the past about constructs and linkages among them and on comparisons between that knowledge and what is presently known about the same phenomena. These guesses are projections about how confidently the relationships found or explanations developed can be expected to obtain in the future. (p. 173)

This is exactly the process I used in making "speculations" about the factors that combine to promote or frustrate the development of literacy tutoring programs. I also evaluate the status of the existing tutoring projects using a similar set of factors.
Yet, if this study is to have any measure of instrumental utility (Eisner, 1991), I must present my "speculations" in a manner that is cohesive and understandable. My evaluations of existing programs are made in the light of the framework of critical components I developed as I compiled information from the literature. This framework is straightforward and almost speaks for itself. When telling the collective stories of those who experienced frustration in establishing tutoring sites, I chose to organize these experiences according to themes and types that emerged as I studied the data and people involved. Eisner (1991) defines themes as "recurring messages construed from the events observed" (p. 189). The utilization of themes in qualitative data analysis is a classic strategy described by Miles and Huberman (1984b) as one that is somewhat instinctive to humans. "The human mind finds patterns so quickly and easily that it needs no how-to advice. Patterns just ‘happen,' almost too quickly" (p. 216).

Summary
The method used in this study is a qualitative case study approach utilizing the classic tools of observation, questionnaires, and interviews, and the narrative tool of collective storytelling. Participants in a tutoring and mentoring initiative were followed for a school year as they experienced varying degrees of success in establishing tutoring projects. The findings in this study were verified through triangulation and member checks. The end result is a description of what factors contributed to implementation or non-implementation of tutoring projects by the trainees.